Insider Events – 17th Annual Institute of Public Administration Canada (IPAC) Leadership Summit

Insider Events – 17th Annual Institute of Public Administration Canada (IPAC) Leadership Summit 
Date: February 24, 2022 
Host Venue: Chime Live

Organizing Team:

 
Erin Bellwood – Event Manager, IPAC

 
David Fulford – CEO, IPAC

 
Dianne Bukaka – Office Coordinator, IPAC

IPAC National Staff

Number of Attendees: Over 1,000

Target audience:

The target audience was public servants in all levels of government (Federal, Provincial and Municipal) across Canada, international public servants, academics, students and the private sector.

Main objective:

The main objective of the summit was Education, Current Affairs and Industry Best Practices.

Uniqueness:

This summit offers training and development for growing leaders within the public sector. Our members are looking for industry best practices on current and relevant topics that public servants are facing or going to face. Training and developing leaders are main themes that sets this conference apart from our annual conference. This conference allows us to have some innovative and thought-provoking content.

Obstacles:

In December we switched from an in-person conference to virtual, while trying to retain and attract new sponsors that have not sponsored our events before. We were also down two team members within weeks of the date of the conference.

Triumphs:

Pulling off the biggest IPAC event to date and surpassing the numbers we had for our virtual annual conference in August of 2021.

New and innovative:

We went innovative in the topics and program material we covered. Going outside the box of what we normally do caused a lot of positive feedback and members were looking for that content for future events. This was our 5^th virtual event and 3^rd using Chime Live and our members are used to the format and comfortable with participating virtually.

We did a cooking demonstration with our Vanier Medal award winner, a very popular Instagram chef, which went over really well.

Content Challenges:

Trying to coordinate speaker schedules and organizing pre-meetings with all parties. We have a conference in November and this one in February which is a tight turn-around to organize.

Improvements:

We increased attendance and interest in the conference with the topics and speakers. It is hard to keep interest and increase attendance to virtual conferences when everyone is looking to have an in-person event. We are lucky, we keep finding new ways to engage our members.

 Article edited by Cynthia Beaudin, Canada Foundation for Innovation